The Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Sheffield invites applications for a PhD studentship in Slavonic linguistics. The studentship is sponsored by the Leverhulme Trust.

ABOUT THE STUDENTSHIP. 'Dived' or 'dove', 'proven' or 'proved'? Competition and variation between forms for the same grammatical 'slot' occurs in all languages, and the Slavonic group, with its rich morphology, is an excellent source of data. The purpose of our project in 'Acceptability and forced-choice judgments in the study of linguistic variation' is to look at how we collect and analyse examples of variation in Slavonic languages, and what different methods of analysis tell us about the features in question.

The successful candidate will receive a three-year studentship at the research council rate of £13,590 per annum, plus travel and conference funding. Tuition fees for UK and other European Economic Area residents (including Switzerland) will be paid in full. (For other applicants, only a portion of the tuition fees can be met.)

ABOUT THE SUCCESSFUL CANDIDATE: Candidates will have a proposal that involves the collection of experimental data (i.e. questionnaires, tests) that can be analysed quantitatively. Proposals might be purely morphosyntactic in focus, or could include a sociolinguistic element (geographic/social distribution of forms or constructions). An interest in tying this research to data gathered from corpora is also welcome, as is a focus on how our methods of collection and analysis may affect the results.

You should have, or be expecting to obtain by this summer, a BA and MA, with at least one of them focusing on linguistics, and thorough grammatical knowledge of and proven ability to read publications written in the Slavonic language you are interested in. The first degree should be a good upper second or equivalent (i.e. cum laude). Some familiarity with corpora and statistics will be an advantage.

The application should include a clearly formulated research proposal of 500-1000 words, plus bibliography. It should propose a preliminary hypothesis or research question and lay out the way in which you plan to test or answer it. Please indicate clearly in the application that the proposed source of funding is the Leverhulme Trust studentship.

Applications should reach us no later than 1 May. We may conduct some interviews by phone before reaching a decision in mid- to late May.

ABOUT THE RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT: The Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies has two linguists on staff, Professor Neil Bermel and Dr Dagmar Divjak, both of whom work on questions of competition, variation, and the relation between corpus and survey data. We play an active role in the School's linguistics cluster and the Faculty Centre for Linguistic Research. For more information, see the following links:

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